Women are the natural enemies of
clocks, and, therefore, the allies of those who would seek liberation from these monsters that measure our follies and limit our pleasures.
Above the session-room of the Council is the steeple, and in the steeple is the belfry, where exists, and has existed time out of mind, the pride and wonder of the village -- the great
clock of the borough of Vondervotteimittiss.
"Look at the
clock, do; why, it's going on for half-past nine, and I've sent the gells to bed this half-hour, and late enough too; when they've got to get up at half after four, and the mowers' bottles to fill, and the baking; and here's this blessed child wi' the fever for what I know, and as wakeful as if it was dinner-time, and nobody to help me to give her the physic but your uncle, and fine work there's been, and half of it spilt on her night-gown--it's well if she's swallowed more nor 'ull make her worse i'stead o' better.
And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the
clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before.
The great
clock of Saint Paul's struck ten--and nothing happened.
Late as the Dutch
clock' showed it to be, the poor woman was still hard at work at an ironing-table; a young child lay sleeping in a cradle near the fire; and another, a sturdy boy of two or three years old, very wide awake, with a very tight night-cap on his head, and a night-gown very much too small for him on his body, was sitting bolt upright in a clothes-basket, staring over the rim with his great round eyes, and looking as if he had thoroughly made up his mind never to go to sleep any more; which, as he had already declined to take his natural rest and had been brought out of bed in consequence, opened a cheerful prospect for his relations and friends.
About a minute before the
clock struck, a hundred and fifty students swarmed in, rushed to their seats, immediately spread open their notebooks and dipped their pens in ink.
Just as in the mechanism of a
clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached.
Sabin lit another cigarette and glanced once more at the
clock.
In two bounds he was at the Louvre; as he entered the wicket of L'Echelle, ten o'
clock struck.
Click,
clock, click,
clock; with each beat of the strangely shaped wings it jumped Bert upward and caught him neatly again half a second later on the saddle.
Electric bells and speaking-tubes afforded communication with the lower stories; while on the mantel stood an electric
clock, precisely like that in Mr.